Wheels - help needed!!

I've thought about this a bit more and if you have trashed a Racing 7 you will eventually trash an Aksium or Racing 5 too. Unless your weight, the extra weight you carry or your routes and riding style are likely to change much in the next year you should definitely go 36 spoke hand built on the rear. You don't even need to buy a set of wheels just get a decent new rear built in a colour to match your perfectly good Racing 7 front wheel unless it's showing signs of wear. You can tell if your front wheel is on the way out because the braking surface starts to go concave as it gets worn away by your brake pads. It's generally not a problem for recreational riding on the weekends but it will always be a problem for city commuters because of the amount of stopping and starting involved.

Have a look at 4ZA Stratos Wheels.

http://www.4za.com/wheels/stratos

i,d go for mavic cxp 33,s hand built, 32 spoke front 36 spoke rear tough as old boots and good value at 206 pound from lbs

Are you carrying much extra weight when you commute?
Do you attach panniers or carry a heavy pack?

If it is just you and the bike then Aksiums would probably do the job. If you end up lugging a laptop and shoes and change of clothes and towel as well then I'd go hand built, maybe even 36 spoke. If you can get a good recommendation for a local wheel builder then go there and talk through your requirements and riding style. You should end up with something that's perfect for the job and with a very good level of after sales care too. A good local wheel builder is much more likely to look after your hand built wheels than the website you got a discount from. Hand builts will be perfectly good for your weekend rides too but will lack the bling factor of flat spokes and deeper rims.

When you end up doing loads more rides at the weekend without the encumbrances of your commuter gear you can always by a set of racy sunny day hoops or go the whole hog and buy a Sunday best bike. n+1!

After a driver wrecked my first "good" bike's rear wheel by trying to enter a roundabout through it, I got a local shop to build replacements.

The spec was Tiagra hubs, ACI double butted spokes (3x 32) and DRC ST-18II rims. They're great wheels, and I've commuted, trained and done sportives on them - cost at the time was £130, although it's a few years ago now. Handbuilts have the advantage of not having proprietary spokes &c too.

Well worth looking into.

Thirded for Ambrosio Zenith hubs, I've got them built up with Mavic CXP22 rims which was about the cheapest handbuilt set my local bike shop would do. They're not as light as the Ksyriums I broke by riding into potholes but they are very true and roll nicely.

"Handbuilt" always sounded like "bespoke" to me, ie another word for "expensive", but I was surprised at how little extra it cost over my normal obsessive online discount hunting. Well worth it especially as you get to meet the person whose skill you're paying for.

Second the Abrosios hubs but also with the Ambrosio Excellence rims.
Totally and utterly dependable. Into my 6th year and only just replaced bearings in the front hub. Everything is replaceable and serviceable.
Nice article about Ambrosio in current issue of Rouleur - makes me even more reassured.

Go cheaper and get some Mavic Aksiums? Bombproof, have had no maintenance on my commuter for 2 years and are perfectly true. And london roads fucking suck, let me tell you.

For what you're doing I'd have thought some hand-built 32 spoke wheels on reliable rims e.g. Mavic Open Pro, preferably with some larger volume tyres (28 or 32mm if they'll fit), would be a better option.

Type the names Harry Rowland, Paul Hewitt and Spa Cycles into google/bing/whatever.

For those kind of miles in those kind of conditions I'd go to someone like Just Riding Along and get a set of 32h wheels made. Ambrosio Zenith hubs and Velocity A23 rims will set you back about £250